Thoughts about journalism, technology and education

NewsU’s First ‘Public’ Beta

Thanks to the support of the Asian American Journalism Association (AAJA), NewsU was able to create its first online group seminar (OGS). An OGS is a e-learning module that allows for more interaction between faculty and participants and among the participants themselves. Mae Cheng, one of the more forward looking journalists at the association, saw e-learning as an opportunity to provide additional services to AAJA members. Mae asked about the possibility of working with Poynter on e-learning even before Poynter had received the Knight grant for the NewsU project. Here’s her October 2002 email to Paul Pohlman and other members of the faculty. I was the Institute’s Presidential Scholar and wouldn’t join the faculty until January 2003.

Hi Paul,
I hope this finds you well.
Just wanted to check back with you on two fronts:
The first is that our convention co-chairs and I have gone through your 2003 course offerings, and the following list are the sessions that most intrigue us. Do you think there’s any way we can get a couple of these sessions to San Diego for our convention in August?
1. poynter leadership for mid-level editors
2. tough choices: doing ethics
3. advanced power reporting for reporters/photojournalists
4. collaboration conference: storytelling partnerships
5. enterprise and investigative reporting for broadcast
6. reporting on race relations.

The second thing I wanted to ask you is if there’s been any furtherthought at Poynter about partnering with us to offer an online training program. [Bold added –Hif]